Evolution & Creationism Debate at Museum

[(SWGO)SirPepsi]

If you choose to go the route of saying my responses are "empty" then I guess you really aren't open to explanations.
I acknowledged that some of your explanations were interesting, that I would further explore them.
As far as:

If the Bible is inspired, why didn't God allow for more clarity (I'm not gonna go into free will), but why didn't he say: Don't use my Word to justify slavery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_C ... nd_slavery, don't use my word to justify oppressing women http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/darkbible7.htm, don't use my word to justify taking Natives' lands away, don't use my word to justify viewing others as inferior or torturing nonbelievers, and don't use my word to justify opposition to homosexuality. Why wasn't this made clear? Answer: a) No one knew that the Bible would be used to justify torturing innocents, etc. or b) no one cared.

or c) The Bible is not to blame for those atrocities. You don't lock up auto makers because someone used a car to run someone over. Many things done in God's name are done to discredit it. I didn't say it was "to blame." I said, if it was inspired, why was there no corresponding effort to make these things clear. If God is omniscient, he knew these things would be done in his name. Why not stop it? Why provide laws like the 10 Commandments (and prove that you are interested in the morality of your people) but not explicitly forbid the evils that would be done later?


But you are going to believe what you want to believe just as I will. (Shrugging) Not true. I make the study of history and of religion my pastime - I learn and come to objective (what I think are objective conclusion).

A bold comment Pepsi. However you corner yourself because you must admit then that if they can be debunked, then it must be the Word of God.

Didn't see this the first time. I will say that you're committing another logical fallacy. What I'm saying here is perfectly reasonable: You say the Bible is infallible, IF there is a mistake, it isn't. That's straightforward. If you can debunk it, that doesn't mean the whole text is absolutely perfect. This is one of those times where it doesn't work both ways.

That's like someone saying,:
Person 1"Obamacare is PERFECT."
Person 2"No it's not, the individual mandate has caused more harm than good bc good people are now choosing to take the penalty because the rates that we thought were going down didn't and they can't afford good health insurance."
*5 years later.*
Person 1: "Ooh, it looks as though the individual mandate has paid off. More people now have access to affordable health care. See, Obamacare IS perfect because the flaw you brought up was proved wrong."
Person 2:"But wait, just because one flaw happens not to be a flaw (and we can still debate if that's true or not) doesn't automatically mean the whole bill is perfect."

In this situation, person 2 is correct.

___


Please answer my other point, if we are to accept that there are distortions resulting from translation, why is it hard to accept that other, important texts were omitted, or that certain facts were added?

[(SWGO)DesertEagle]

Pepsi, you have hit upon a couple of central issues in Christianity that are sticking points for many people.

First: problem of evil, how can there be evil and yet God be good and omniscient/omnipotent/etc. Nobody has totally solved this problem, but I do believe it has something to do with the existence of free will and the fact that bad choices bring consequences. God is apparently more glorified when we chose to worship Him rather than if we had no choice, so He gave us that choice. We chose badly and suffered the consequences. However, knowing that we would make a bad choice, He provided a way out. Somehow He is glorified even when people reject Him and are punished. I don't pretend to understand that (I don't think anyone does).

Second: the inspired and perfect nature of the Word of God. We assume the Word of God is perfect because it says so. Yes, that would be circular reasoning but we are starting from somewhere different, namely, a belief in our hearts that God would not leave us without a way to know Him. There is no logical or scientific basis for it, it is just a knowing. At it's core, a belief in God comes from nowhere but within.

Supporting this is the very special care that the copyists of the Scriptures took when they were producing their copies. Comparing manuscripts from thousands of years apart shows very little change, and certainly nothing that would alter doctrine. A big boost was the relatively recent discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, which turned out to be extremely similar to the Masoretic Hebrew text that the the English Old Testament is mostly based on even though it was made hundreds of years earlier. There is no historical document like the Old Testament, nothing that spans this length of history and yet correlates very well with outside sources. There does not yet exist an archaeological discovery that directly contradicts the Bible, not after hundreds of years of research. Prophecies have come true after thousands of years (i.e. Israel would become a nation in a single day after being practically destroyed by the Romans). This happened about 50 years ago (in spite of every effort that was made to prevent it) but was predicted in Isaiah 66:8, thousands of years ago. It is also stated that Israel will never be driven from their land, and you know how hard that would be to fulfill with everyone else in the Middle East pretty much hating them. So far so good.

We are approaching the text from different points of view. You are looking for the problems and assuming a contradiction is a contradiction and thus a problem. I assume that any apparent contradiction is a mistake on my part or very unlikely a translation mistake because I have a prior commitment to the integrity of the text, so I look for an explanation of how it could work without stretching the text beyond what it allows. I cannot answer all of your questions, but I can say that most of them are answerable and easily explained.

I am not going to "convert" anyone by convincing them that the Bible is correct and that Creationism is the true paradigm because that requires one to be a Christian, they just don't make sense otherwise. I can help explain some of the apparent problems they are seeing if that is what is holding them back, but that alone is not going to convince anyone. I say this because I am curious about your motives here. Everyone has pretty much had their say now, so I think I understand most of everyone's positions, but I don't know the motives yet. Are you curious about how we can believe all this, having an issue with believing it yourself, or just debating for the educational value? (no sarcasm intended, I'm truly curious). I'm assuming the first and the last ones are true, but I don't want to misjudge you.

I ask this because we can debate this till the sun goes down but we will never get anywhere useful (maybe sharpen our skills and our points, but not much beyond that).

[Col. Hstar]

Please answer my other point, if we are to accept that there are distortions resulting from translation, why is it hard to accept that other, important texts were omitted, or that certain facts were added?

The answer to this point is actually a very compelling reason to believe in the bible:
Think about how incredibly dangerous it is to copy a document by hand.

Sir Frederic Kenyon, archaeologist, and librarian of the British Museum

“The human hand and brain have not yet been created which could copy the whole of a long work absolutely without error. . . . Mistakes were certain to creep in.”

When a mistake crept into a manuscript, it was repeated when that manuscript became the basis for future copies. When many copies were made over a long period of time, numerous human errors crept in. With the books of the bible written centuries ago, and the originals gone, the odds of the bible being copied accurately are terrible.
YET
With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, (some which date to before the time of Christ) it was found that amazingly the texts were extremely close.

Professor Millar Burrows writes:

Many of the differences between St. Mark’s Isaiah scroll and the Masoretic text can be explained as mistakes in copying. Apart from these, there is a remarkable agreement, on the whole, with the text found in the medieval manuscripts. Such agreement in a manuscript so much older gives reassuring testimony to the general accuracy of the traditional text.”
“It is a matter for wonder that through something like a thousand years the text underwent so little alteration.”

So the question is how did the multiple copies made 2,000+ years ago all beat the odds? It had to be divine intervention.

This is why I can believe the Bible when it says at 2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is inspired of God

[11_Panama_]

Sorry guys, this is getting boring. The back and forth and then back again. What are we all gaining out of this? No one is being "enlightened". As a er of fact, I see it as a dividing wall. When we start defending our Ideology, we grow further and further apart. I don't see an "up side " to this. And the lack of evidence on both sides, just makes this a bit redundant. Can't we all agree that the origin of life is still a mystery?


Sorry, I just had to say it.

[[NH]Shadow]

Sorry guys, this is getting boring. The back and forth and then back again. What are we all gaining out of this? No one is being "enlightened". As a er of fact, I see it as a dividing wall. When we start defending our Ideology, we grow further and further apart. I don't see an "up side " to this. And the lack of evidence on both sides, just makes this a bit redundant. Can't we all agree that the origin of life is still a mystery?


Sorry, I just had to say it.

^ This, or we could wait 40-80 years, and see who's right

[11_Panama_]

Sorry guys, this is getting boring. The back and forth and then back again. What are we all gaining out of this? No one is being "enlightened". As a er of fact, I see it as a dividing wall. When we start defending our Ideology, we grow further and further apart. I don't see an "up side " to this. And the lack of evidence on both sides, just makes this a bit redundant. Can't we all agree that the origin of life is still a mystery?


Sorry, I just had to say it.

^ This, or we could wait 40-80 years, and see who's right

That's exactly what I think this is.... who's right and who's wrong... who cares.

[(SWGO)Max]

That's exactly what I think this is.... who's right and who's wrong... who cares.

"All I care about is money and the city where I'm from, I don't really give a .... and my excuse is that I'm young."

[[NH]Shadow]

Sorry guys, this is getting boring. The back and forth and then back again. What are we all gaining out of this? No one is being "enlightened". As a er of fact, I see it as a dividing wall. When we start defending our Ideology, we grow further and further apart. I don't see an "up side " to this. And the lack of evidence on both sides, just makes this a bit redundant. Can't we all agree that the origin of life is still a mystery?


Sorry, I just had to say it.

^ This, or we could wait 40-80 years, and see who's right

That's exactly what I think this is.... who's right and who's wrong... who cares.

This whole Evolutionism/Creationism thing is fun as an intellectual debate, but once it starts getting personal, it makes me lose interest.

[(SWGO)SirPepsi]

Please answer my other point, if we are to accept that there are distortions resulting from translation, why is it hard to accept that other, important texts were omitted, or that certain facts were added?

The answer to this point is actually a very compelling reason to believe in the bible:
Think about how incredibly dangerous it is to copy a document by hand.

Sir Frederic Kenyon, archaeologist, and librarian of the British Museum

“The human hand and brain have not yet been created which could copy the whole of a long work absolutely without error. . . . Mistakes were certain to creep in.”

When a mistake crept into a manuscript, it was repeated when that manuscript became the basis for future copies. When many copies were made over a long period of time, numerous human errors crept in. With the books of the bible written centuries ago, and the originals gone, the odds of the bible being copied accurately are terrible.
YET
With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, (some which date to before the time of Christ) it was found that amazingly the texts were extremely close.

Professor Millar Burrows writes:

Many of the differences between St. Mark’s Isaiah scroll and the Masoretic text can be explained as mistakes in copying. Apart from these, there is a remarkable agreement, on the whole, with the text found in the medieval manuscripts. Such agreement in a manuscript so much older gives reassuring testimony to the general accuracy of the traditional text.”
“It is a er for wonder that through something like a thousand years the text underwent so little alteration.”

So the question is how did the multiple copies made 2,000+ years ago all beat the odds? It had to be divine intervention.

This is why I can believe the Bible when it says at 2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is inspired of God

You're missing my point, friend. I said IF we can accept that there are translation errors (and you conceded this), why is it impossible to accept that someone added their own opinion into the book, or stretched/embellished language purposely? If we can prove there are flaws, however small, why can't we believe that there are larger, more significant changes or alterations in doctrine? Why is it hard to believe that the Bible is merely an amalgamation of texts that were chosen by people in power to be included in a politically-charged book to convey a certain point of view or accomplish a certain end?

@DesertEagle, I accept your response, and I appreciate it, but I'm not referring back to the time-old criticism of God in which I claim that if evil exists, He is to blame. No, I am not talking about the nature of God but the Bible itself. Why doesn't the Bible explicitly prohibit these evil things? If it did, and they still occurred, then your argument is valid, but it doesn't even seek to forbid these evil things. Secondly, I am not, in the debate we're having now, attempting to sway your faith in God or in Christ, but I am attempting to convince you (or at least get you to seriously consider) that the Bible is a flawed text.

[CommanderOtto]

You're missing my point, friend. I said IF we can accept that there are translation errors (and you conceded this), why is it impossible to accept that someone added their own opinion into the book, or stretched/embellished language purposely? If we can prove there are flaws, however small, why can't we believe that there are larger, more significant changes or alterations in doctrine? Why is it hard to believe that the Bible is merely an amalgamation of texts that were chosen by people in power to be included in a politically-charged book to convey a certain point of view or accomplish a certain end?

because:

1. In antiquity, scribes saw their job as very important because they were copying Divine Law, thus, they copied with extreme care. In fact, it is known that scribes in ancient israel counted scripture word by word, supposedly being 815.140 words in total, every time they copied.

2. There are around 6000 manuscripts of the hebrew text alone. There are also about 3000 of the greek text. Many of these manuscripts are from many different places from different periods of time of antiquity. If there was a major difference from manuscripts from each region, then it would be known there were alterations to the text. If you do that child's game where one person sends a message and tells it to the person next to him and to the person next to him, in the end the message is different. But, in the case of the Bible, a text that has been copied thousands of times by thousands of people through several different eras and regions, and yet all the different manuscripts out there have the same text (with some minor copying mistakes that can be cached by comparing all those different manuscripts).

3. I believe the Institute for New Testament Textual Research has the majority of the manuscripts in microfilm. A comparison from all the different texts of the new testament from all the different regions and eras also demonstrates that the new testament has seen rare and minor alterations.

4. also, I found it interesting that people in the Renaissance were very worried about Ad Fontes (going back to the sources). Then, many different projects from several countries produced Bibles in several different languages with accurate translations from less manuscripts than those we have nowadays. To mention a few of those Renaissance Bibles, The King James Version, The Complutensian Polyglot, the Antwerp Polyglot and the Reina Valera, all done by different people, all producing the same text.

5. Nowadays, all the countless versions of the Bible, all translated by so many organizations using different manuscripts, but once again, all of them pretty much the same.

6. Finally, if the text were to be corrupted by a scribe, an in depth study of the style of the writer would also show if there was some kind of alteration. Comparing the text with historical context would also bring out any additions from the future. In fact, contextual and historical study has already proven that some books are not from the Bible, just like we know that the apocrypha are not from the original scriptures.